Research

Three cross-cutting themes connect faculty, researchers, and students working on CISSM’s research agenda: reducing risks from dual-use technologies; enhancing human security; and improving multi-stakeholder governance.
CISSM is exploring these themes in current research projects focused on: .

Fraught U.S.-Russian security dynamics have spurred reevaluations of the entire relationship between the two former Cold War adversaries. The Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland (CISSM)’s U.S.-Russia Security Relations project focuses on establishing a constructive agenda for the two countries that includes security issues where the risks for confrontation are high but where cooperation to reduce shared dangers is possible.

No country, company, or private individual can fully utilize the benefits of information technology while protecting all of their own data, communications, or computer networks from every potential cyber threat, regardless of how much time and money they invest in protective systems. Each entity must set priorities, balance tradeoffs, and make choices about cyber protection, knowing that their choices will affect others and that others’ choices will affect them, too. Minimizing the most serious forms of cyber attack, espionage, and crime without hindering beneficial uses of information technology requires skillful multi-stakeholder governance. This project includes a set of research, education, and outreach activities to facilitate that process.

The lengthy process of negotiating, approving, and implementing a nuclear agreement with Iran has underscored how Iranian relations with the rest of the world can have major effects on international security—for both good and bad. This project seeks to improve U.S. and European security policy making towards Iran by increasing public and official understanding of the concerns and perspectives of Iran’s leaders and citizens.

Nuclear weapons and materials continue to pose unnecessary risks that could be addressed by shifting global security policies away from legacy deterrence policies. Ensuring nuclear security in the coming decades will also require nations to adapt their policies in response to the challenges posed by global warming and the growth in nuclear power generation aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. To make rapid enough technical and political progress on a program that avoids both catastrophic climate change and nuclear disaster requires the major powers to fundamentally change their relationships, to reduce risks associated with their own nuclear programs, and to establish new systems to manage and secure the nuclear fuel cycle.

Recent technological and geopolitical developments underscore again the need to balance a desire to preserve complete freedom of action and widely accepted governing rules as the basis for space operations. This project explores what has changed, and what has not, since George W. Bush’s quest for U.S. military space dominance first prompted CISSM to consider whether the United States could use its huge military advantages in space to achieve reliable security for itself and its allies, or if the stability, security, and safety of space operations required more equitable cooperation among all stakeholders.

As violent conflict shifts markedly from the inter-state arena to civil wars, the need for sustained global engagement to foresee, mediate, and prevent civil conflict grows. CISSM employs a holistic approach to this program of study because the mechanisms and microdynamics that drive civil conflict remain complex and are closely intertwined with political and development processes. Civil violence forces security policies to expand beyond military operations to include broader questions of social and economic interventions.

The Program for Public Consultation (PPC) seeks to improve the quality of governance by consulting the citizenry on the key public policy issues their government faces. It conducts surveys of public attitudes in the United States and in other countries, using innovative methods such as policymaking simulations.

This project began with the intention of exploring the role of missile defense in extended deterrence and nonproliferation worldwide. However, era-changing events in Europe, notably the Russian aggression in Crimea and Ukraine, mandated a core shift in the project’s focus. As a result, the project became more oriented toward Europe. As U.S.-Russia tensions continued to escalate and NATO allies searching for greater reassurance, missile defense—relegated to the back burner since the end of the Cold War—again took center stage. Familiar debates about the technical efficacy of missile defense, its role in assuring allies, and the potential for undermining strategic stability reemerged in today’s more complex security environment with a sense of greater urgency than at any time in the last 25 years.

CISSM’s research in this area seeks to shed light on how multi-stakeholder governance initiatives form, what drives or impedes cross-sector cooperation, and when multi-stakeholder approaches are most effective. It aims to bridge the gap between academic scholarship and policy practice by assessing the strengths and weaknesses of different conceptions of global governance. It aspires to help improve global problem-solving by identifying ways in which greater inclusion of NSAs in governance processes could produce better results.